There is a special per-hour per-region fee for each region in which you have instances running on dedicated hardware. This fee is in addition to the base instance fees and is $2.40/hour for each region in which you have running dedicated instances, regardless of how many dedicated instances you are running.

If you require HIPAA compliant environments, you must have Premium or Managed Support and also need to enter into a Business Associates Agreement. Submit a ticket to get started with HIPAA compliance documentation.

You might want to contact Engine Yard Support to walk you through the process of establishing a VPC-enabled account. (We are working on making VPC-enabled account information more visible on the UI; until then, Support can help get you started.)

Get started with dedicated instances on Engine Yard

This document describes how to use dedicated instances with Engine Yard.

Prerequisites

You must enable "Dedicated Instances" feature via early access control.

You must add a new instance to use this feature. You cannot modify an existing instance / volume.

You must use 64-bit instances (32-bit instances are not supported).

You must have a VPC-enabled account. If you have had an Engine Yard account for a while, you might need to create a new Engine Yard account in order to use the dedicated instances feature in your region. This is because it is part of the AWS default VPC feature set. Check the AWS "default VPC" region release dates or contact Engine Yard Support if you need help. See note, above.

Configure dedicated instances

Important: There is a special per-hour per-region fee for each region in which you have instances running on dedicated hardware. This fee is in addition to the base instance fees and is $2.40/hour for each region in which you have running dedicated instances, regardless of how many dedicated instances you are running.

You can configure dedicated instances when you add new instances to a new or existing environment.

Note: We recommend testing in a staging environment before applying changes in a production environment.

If this is a staging environment and you are finished with testing, be sure and stop any dedicated instances to avoid unnecessary charges.

Stop any unneeded dedicated instances to avoid unnecessary charges.

FAQs

You might have these questions about dedicated instances.

Why is the cost of dedicated instances higher than the same instance type, non-dedicated?

Your dedicated instances are reserved exclusively for your app and are your own hardware, within your own Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

But I thought all Engine Yard instances were dedicated to my applications' use?

This is terminology chosen by AWS to indicate that the instance you are provisioning ("dedicated instance") is on its own hardware. All Engine Yard provisioned instances are virtual machines that are dedicated to your use only; they are virtual machines and as such may be sharing the same a physical server (hardware) with other virtual machines. AWS dedicated instances mean dedicated hardware.

How secure is it?

Your dedicated instances are contained within a private, isolated virtual network, and are isolated at the hardware level. It is your own non-shared server.

How much does it cost?

There is a $2.40/hour fee for using dedicated instances in each region they are used in, regardless of how many instances are used. Aside from that, dedicated instance hourly rates are the same as non-dedicated instance hourly rates.

Troubleshooting

No dedicated instances appear in the add-instance drop-down selection list.

If you have had an Engine Yard account for a while, you might need to create a new Engine Yard account in order to use the dedicated instances feature in your region. This is because it is part of the AWS default VPC feature set. Check the AWS "default VPC" region release dates or contact Engine Yard Support if you need help. See note, above.

The dedicated instance will not provision in any AZ in the region I selected.

Same solution as above.

When I clicked HTTP on the app server, I received a 500 Internal Server Error.

If this is the first time provisioning, wait a few minutes and try again.